It was quiet, the dishes all put away after their Christmas dinner, the basketball game long over, and Burt had fallen asleep almost an hour ago in Kurt’s bed. Kurt and Blaine, however, were still awake.

Blaine sat on the sofa while Kurt sat a little farther away, cross legged on the floor, poking at an ornament as it reflected the lights off the Christmas tree. It was his mother’s perfume bottle, Blaine recognized, Kurt had told him about it the first Christmas they knew each other.

Blaine considered lying down and going to sleep, leaving the other boy to make his way to Rachel’s bed, where he’d be sleeping, in his own time, but Kurt hadn’t moved from his spot since before Burt gruffed out a “goodnight boys,” with a clap on each of their shoulders and went to bed, and it was beginning to worry him.

“Kurt?” Blaine asked quietly from his spot on the couch, wary of too loud a noise reaching Burt and waking him.

Kurt tilted his head a little towards where Blaine was slightly behind him but kept his eyes on the ornament. “Hmm?”

Blaine rubbed his hands nervously on his thighs, “You are okay with it, aren’t you?”

“Okay with what?” Kurt replied, dropping his eyes from the ornament finally.

“Well, with me...” Blaine frowned, “with me trying out for NYADA.”

Blaine thought he saw a small sad smile grace Kurt’s face before he finally stood, all stiff limbed, and made to pass by the couch into the kitchen. His voice sounded a little hollow when he spoke, “Of course I’m okay with it. Why wouldn’t I be?”

The shorter boy followed him with his eyes, turning his body on the couch when Kurt made it to the kitchen.

“You just seemed a bit... tense with it all.”

Kurt sighed lightly and placed his hands on the counter, closing his eyes. He stayed like that for a moment before Blaine got up and joined him, standing a little farther away than he would have liked, but close enough to see the slight anguish on Kurt’s face.

“I mean,” Blaine began, raising his hand to touch Kurt’s shoulder to try and comfort him somehow for whatever was bothering him but thinking better of it at the last minute and lowering it awkwardly, “you have the right here to... to get mad or whatever and tell me you don’t want me to. This is a big city, I’m sure I can find some other kind of opportunities.”

Kurt shook his head slightly and gave a small smile as he opened his eyes, “Of course you could, Blaine. You’re so talented you could make your own opportunities if you had to. But NYADA is a good choice, and they’ll love you. You sing from your heart, Carmen will love that. You’ll be great.”

Blaine fidgeted a little on his feet, “Are you sure? You don’t seem... I guess thrilled is the wrong word, but, you just seem like you don’t care for the idea.”

“The past couple days have just thrown me around a bit, is all,” Kurt sighed, standing up from his position over the counter to shrug lightly at Blaine, providing a slight glance in the direction of his bedroom.

Blaine’s eyes widened, “Oh.”

Kurt slid his eyes back over to the tree past Blaine’s shoulder, “I always think about her at Christmas, my mom, that is. I think about what she’d think about me, or dad, or even Carole and Finn now. I think about what she’d think of you. You and me. I think about all that. And now I think about how she feels about the possibility of dad joining her.”

“He’s going to be fine, Kurt,” Blaine reassured, his hand coming up to rest against Kurt’s upper arm this time, hoping to instill some comfort in the taller boy. The action caused Kurt’s eyes to dart back to his. “The doctors think it’ll be okay, and I swear to you Kurt, I’ll take care of him for you. I promise.”

Kurt sighed and looked down. “I feel like I’m losing everyone these days,” he whispered.

Oh. Blaine didn’t know how to respond properly to that. He missed Kurt so much, but he knew he had to give him his time, let him figure out everything at his own pace. “I’m sorry,” is all he could breathe back.

“No, don’t be,” Kurt said, waving his hand to brush away the topic and then stepping away from Blaine, walking slowly across the room before halting. “And, really, I’m fine with you going to NYADA.”

Blaine shuffled over so that they could continue to keep their voices down, “I don’t want things to be awkward for you. I don’t want you to say that and then hate seeing me all the time. You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met, Kurt, but don’t tell me that it’ll be okay if it’s just going to be difficult for you.”

Kurt huffed out an aggravated sigh, “Can you stop telling me that I’m going to hate seeing you all the time?”

“What?”

Kurt shook his head at Blaine’s obliviousness. “It’s difficult right now, yeah, and things are tense because I just found out my dad has cancer, and you already knew, and I still don’t even know where I stand with you because I want to forgive you and forget about everything, I do, but it still hurts too much to think about it, and so I’m not there yet. But I don’t know where I’ll be in a half a year. I don’t know where I’ll be in a couple days.

“But even through all of that,” Kurt continued, his eyes growing misty, “I miss you. You’re... you’re my best friend, you know that, and you know that I love you. I love you so much, and as much as it kills me to see you right now, it’s still like I can’t get enough of your face because I miss you. So, next year, no matter where we stand, it may be hard to see you around, but at the same time it’ll be so much easier, because I won’t have to miss you. Because you’ll be here.”

Blaine blinked back at Kurt, not quite knowing what to say.

Kurt took a breath and focused back on Blaine, looking straight into his eyes. “It hurts because they’ll snatch you right up when they didn’t want me the first time around. But I love you, and somehow that makes everything so much more complicated, but so much easier at the same time. I just don’t want to have to miss you anymore.”

Blaine looked down at his shoes, unable to form a response as his head swam with Kurt’s words. He briefly noted Kurt dropping his head back to sigh again, but before he could, he huffed out an unamused laugh, followed by a growled “Rachel.”

“What?” Blaine asked, looking up to what Kurt saw and, oh, wasn’t that an amusing sight. There, hanging from a string attached to one of the beams, was a small bundle of mistletoe. Blaine immediately dropped his bugged out eyes to Kurt’s and started stuttering out, “We don’t have to do anything. It’s just some stupid thing people do and really it’s okay.”

Kurt shook his head, “No need to pretend we’ve never kissed before,” and then he leaned in, one hand cupping Blaine’s jaw, and kissed the other boy quickly but softly. There was a pleasurable twist in his gut that was echoed in Blaine’s and, god, if he didn’t miss this boy with all his heart.

A small breath left Blaine’s lips when Kurt pulled away as he slowly opened his eyes. There was so much emotion in those eyes and Kurt wasn’t sure what to do with it, so he gave him a small sad smile and a whispered, “goodnight Blaine,” before he turned to walk away.

“I love you, too, by the way,” Blaine stated in a small voice that had Kurt stopping. “I always will.” He paused for a moment, “Do you think... in the future, do you think we’ll...”

Kurt’s sad smile shifted into a real one; small, but genuinely happy. “I like to think so, yes,” he replied before heading for Rachel’s room, leaving Blaine with a small hopeful smile of his own.

Kurt and Blaine, well, they knew a lot of things at that moment. They knew they’d always love each other, no matter their outcome. They knew that they’d always be there for each other, through everything. And they knew that the future held many things, and those things could be bright and wonderful for the two of them.

What they didn’t know about was the smile on Burt Hummel’s face as he rolled over in bed and fell back asleep.